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There’s a road Beth walks.
It’s a beautiful road.
Beth found it one day opening through a cluster of Southern Magnolia trees, identified in a book Daryl once found for them. A stunning net of flowers decorates it, a creamy white that contrasts delightfully with the trees' dark green, glossy leaves. The flowers are bowl-shaped with waxy petals that sometimes look artificial.
If they didn’t emit such a sweet, lemony scent, most strongly in the evening time, then Beth wouldn’t even believe them to be real. She’s studied them up close many times and watched beetles pollinate the heady flowers. When the beetles have done their job, Beth has returned to find cone-like fruits of which the insides contain bright red seeds.
They’re bitter to eat, and despite how many times she's tried to grind or boil them, she never finds herself enjoying them. The petals of the flowers too, are quite bitter but are a substitute for herbal tea when she has the craving. What she does enjoy, surprisingly, are the shoots of dandelion and white clover that burst through the cracks of her beautiful road.
One of earth's many blessings, both are especially good for pregnancy.
The dandelion, with its deeply lobed, bright green leaves, taproots, and round, yellow flowers, composed of tiny florets are high in calcium, iron, and vitamins A, C, and K. Those she eats raw after washing or steamed, or else she’ll grind them for a fake coffee.
The white clover, with its three rounded leaflets and small, white, spherical clusters of tiny florets, tinged with pink, is sweet and gives her protein. It’s essential for her baby's growth, with minerals and vitamins included too.
Both flowers populate her road and her stores at home, the cracked pavement boxed by old barbed wire fences that Beth took the time to mend during her pregnancy. It’s like a split off from her house now, the road; a safe place to roam.
It takes her to a clearing full of a plethora of nature that she’s spent many an afternoon identifying. There are goldenrods, tall, upright stems, and bright yellow flowers as well as Black-eyed Susans, gold petals, and dark brown, dome-shaped centers. There are boxwood shrubs and sweetgum trees with star-shaped leaves that produce spiky seed pods.
It’s a frequent destination, often visited by creatures of all shapes and sizes. There’s always a hum in the clearing too, like a vibration of the many animals within it. Fat, yellow bees, and bright blue butterflies. Throbbing red fireflies linger in the summer and tiny, black ants march busily across the tree trunks.
Beth once spied a Red-bellied woodpecker in the trees and watched it for over an hour. Another time, a white-tailed deer dashed out as she walked in, far too quick for her to contemplate it becoming her dinner. She does regularly catch squirrels and rabbits there though, and on some rare occasions, snakes and opossums.
Beth knows that when her baby is old enough, she’ll bring them here to see the beauty of the clearing and feel the magic of it. To show them that the clearing, with its bountiful plants and animals, has kept them alive in her stomach and been their survival.
And it’s gorgeous, there’s no doubt, this little road that leads to her clearing and then back to her sanctuary, but it’s also lonely. Her lonely road. It’s a quiet walk, no walkers around, just her consistently churning thoughts and checklists. She’s been prepping for months now, since the positive pregnancy test.
After a month of sitting at Daryl’s grave, withering away while he rotted in the ground, Beth forced herself on a run. She took the test in the house, but she didn’t look at it until she was beside him again. When the two lines showed positive, she couldn’t help but stare at his grave, at the lack of father written on it.
Truthfully, Beth’s not sure anything would have given her the motivation to live like carrying their child. All the prep she had started with Daryl: generators, running water, a pantry; a home, was waiting for her driving force. She had a lot of knowledge from the prison, but it was hard, exhausting work for one person to execute, let alone a pregnant person.
Her reward was the road and the beauty weaving through and beyond it. The clearing. The glimpse of the future waiting for her if she pushed hard enough.
It’s day two hundred and forty since Daryl’s death, and on her lonely, beautiful road, Beth’s waters break. She gasps, pausing mid-step. The sun isn’t warm but it’s bright overhead as if a spotlight of the universe has lit upon the moment she’s been waiting for.
Beth takes hold of her bump, cradling it with budding tears. “You’re couple weeks early, baby. M’not ready yet.”
She takes a deep breath through her nose and forces her chin to stop wobbling. There were just a few more things she wanted to do. The alarms need a final glance over, her food supply one last count even if she’s done it a million times. She never did find any pain medication in time either.
Panic begins to climb inside her, clawing and burrowing its way into her heart but Beth beats it back. Her baby won’t be born in fear. She clings to the smooth metal of the fence at her right, letting it bite into her fingers for clarity. Taking another deep breath of the cold air, she lets the taste settle on her tongue; sharp in her mouth.
“I am ready,” she says firmly. “I am, baby. It’s okay. M’sorry. I am ready.”
She continues walking, wincing at the wet cling of her jeans. It’s not long until she gets home, and she hobbles around, making sure everything is locked up and shut tight as her lower back begins to twinge. One particularly strong cramp grips her lower abdomen and she has to take a moment to brace against the kitchen wall and gasp.
She raises her wrist and keeps a keen eye on her watch. Uses the breathing techniques she’s been memorising for this very moment. Contrary to what she imagined, the pain is worse in her back than in her stomach. She continues to cradle her bump throughout the contraction, fear and determination warring in her chest.
Tears leak steadily throughout the process, a release of a multitude of emotions she can’t put her finger on. Beth decides not to fight it. This process has to be as smooth as it can be for the baby. She can’t stress them out.
“S’okay,” she soothes aloud, stroking her stomach. “It’s okay, baby, we’re okay.”
After thirty-five seconds, her first contraction ends.
“I can do this.”
Beth potters around the kitchen, sipping on the echinacea brew she had stored to boost her immune system. Another gift of her clearing, in the form of daisy-like, pink flowers, and deep orange central cones. She begins the process of brewing dandelion tea for her next drink, to support her muscle function, and provide much-needed minerals.
She takes a basket and begins to fill it with the necessary drinks and snacks she’ll need to keep her energy up through the labor. Previously stored and wrapped parcels of rabbit and squirrel meat, cooked dandelion, mint, and berries. Her dandelion and nettle tea, lemon balm, as well as her ginger water and plain.
With her basket secured, Beth begins the climb of the stairs with heavy pants, her knees wobbly, to the bedroom she set up as her delivery suite. She chose it precisely for its lockable door and ensuite bathroom. She’s spent every spare moment cleaning and prepping it in the lead-up to her birth.
Opening the door now, she surveys it with a critical eye once more. There wouldn’t be time to change her mind now but it makes her feel better to assess the space. A large bed, covered only in one white sheet with a multitude of pillows ranging in firmness. It seems dramatic to use white, but it’s her visual aid for keeping an eye on her blood loss. Beneath it is plastic, so she can bin everything when it’s over.
On the side board, she’s lined up her sterile scissors and shoelaces for the umbilical cord. There’s rubbing alcohol for sterilisation, clean cloths, and blankets, as well as belts and scarfs, boiled water with dissolved sugar and salt, and salt water solution, in case she hemorrhages.
In the dresser, she has her extra pillows, sheets, and blankets, as well as a multitude of candles and matches. Spare clothes for her and the acquired ones she's found for the baby. Little hats and tiny babygrows she's so excited to finally use. All of the baby items she'll need for the first couple of days that she hopes to keep them both safe here while she's recovering.
As she’s been planning, Beth turns and locks the door. Then she puts the basket at the side of the bed and tackles pushing the heavy dresser against the door in just the optimum position to bar it effectively. Next, she takes to closing the curtains and lighting the candles around the room. It’s nearly dark out and she wants her house to look empty and lifeless from the outside.
She has to take a moment of pause when she’s done, her clothes sticking to her skin with her first beading of sweat. She takes her hair out and re-ties it, gathering all the loose strands that are tickling and infuriating her.
When that task is complete, she sets to stripping. As vulnerable as it makes her feel, she removes all of her clothes until she’s naked. This is a raw birth and she wants it to feel so. She worked hard to get here, to prepare for this. She wants her baby to have skin-to-skin contact, and she wants to remove any stressors from their birth.
The last of her clothes hit the ground, and Beth moans as another contraction sweeps into her lower back, particularly against her spine. She practices her breathing methods once more while she times it, leaning against the wall for strength. A persistent ache remains in her lower back when it’s over and tears flood her cheeks with the strength of it.
“S’okay baby,” she whispers, cradling her lower spine. “We’re okay. Shall we see what’s goin’ on?”
Beth talks to herself a lot these days but there’s something more comforting about talking to the baby here; now. It’s like they’re doing it together like she’s not in it all alone. She takes herself over to the bed, the pillows already arranged exactly as she needs them. There’s a large, hard headboard to help prop her up as she settles in.
First, she cleans her hands with her supplies. Then, taking her middle and index fingers, she spreads her legs and slides them inside. Her two fingers manage to spread just a little.
“Three or four, I think, baby,” Beth whispers. “Not quite yet, huh?”
She cleans her hands again and then sips on her nettle tea. Heat flushes through her veins and she feels warm and painfully aware of her stomach as it throbs. She closes her eyes and takes deep breaths, ready to meet hers and Daryl’s child.
Six hours later, by Beth’s wristwatch, she’s an inferno. Her contractions are stronger and closer, and the pressure on her spine is excruciating.
“You’re okay, we’re okay,” she sobs, her face soaked with hours’ worth of tears. “S’okay.”
Pain radiates into Beth’s hips and thighs, grasping and clawing at her until she’s forced to rock her hips for relief.
“God, Daryl, I need you,” she cries. “I need someone!”
She checks her dilation again and finds her two fingers now spread comfortably.
“Five or six, baby,” she chokes. “Centimetre an’ hour.”
She laughs wetly and then mops up her face to drink water and nibble on some rabbit meat. When she’s sufficiently fed herself, she braces her hands on the side of the bed and sways her hips to relieve the pain, repeating the same words over and over.
“I need you, I need you, I need you.”
At hour ten, Beth’s soft cries become frightened, desperate gasps. The pain in her spine is unbearable and she’s been on her hands and knees for twenty minutes, rocking and sweating and begging to Gods she doesn’t believe in for relief.
“Wha’s wrong, baby?” She moans, face down on her pillows; her hair sticking to her slick forehead. “Wha’s wrong?”
She keeps chanting it between hiccupping tears, switching from her hands and knees to spreading her legs intermittently.
Exhaustion yanks hard at her bones until she slurs it and then disappears into the abyss.
When Beth wakes, the pain in her spine is blinding and sends her upright and back onto her hands and knees.
“Oh God, please,” she chokes through immediate tears. “Please, please, I’ve done ‘nough. I’ve done ‘nough!”
A warm, gentle hand lands on her lower back right where it aches and Beth freezes, paralysed in a haze of heat and pain. The hazy orange candles smudge in her peripheral vision and she doesn’t dare lift her head and look between the greasy strings of her hair.
“Y’doin’ good, girl. Doin’ so good.”
Her chin wobbles and her lips quiver around his name. “Daryl?”
But when she turns to look, the hand on her spine disappears and there’s no one there.
By the twenty-sixth hour, Beth is boarding on incoherent. There’s no urge to push, even though she’s eight centimeters dilated and all the pain is in her back. There are certainly strong contractions in her abdomen, which is tender but her spine feels as if it’s eroded. She can no longer get up and move around as regularly as she did at her fifteenth hour.
She can scarcely move her weak muscles to snack on berries or drink her ginger tea. She’s bleeding minimally, which all her books told her is normal. But her contractions are strong and regular, and she’s drained in every aspect of the word. She’s trying not to let the fear take her to the dark pits it wants to, but she’s terrified.
It’s taking too long. Something is wrong.
She hobbles around the room at hour twenty-eight relighting the candles. It reeks of sweat and sickness in here, and she wishes she had the energy to clean up a little. As it is, between the screaming and crying, it takes her a full hour to light the candles and retie her hair. When she slides back onto the bed with soft sobs, she lies back and stares at the ceiling.
Something is wrong.
This baby refuses to be born.
A horrible dread blooms in her chest, becoming a certainty that sweeps over her. She’s about to birth a dead baby. The baby was conceived when Daryl was bitten. He was infected and he infected her in return. She begged for it even. The thing inside her is going to rip its way out and eat her from within. She’s going to die in this room with a corpse in the shape of a newborn.
“Have you been rottin’ inside me this whole time?” She asks the ceiling, tears bleeding into her ears.
Her skin burns as if in answer, the acknowledgment of the fever that’s been harboring inside her.
When hour thirty-one rolls around, Beth is a trembling bundle of hot nerves. Sweat coats her like a second skin. The plastic beneath the sheet makes her feel wet constantly. She’s finding it difficult to stay alert. The squirrel meat is making her nauseous and lemon balm isn’t helping.
All she knows is pain and fear.
All she wants is relief.
Even if that’s the relief of death.
Hour thirty-two brings for the first time, the urge to push and a dilation check tells her that she’s finally the full ten centimetres.
“It’s time,” she moans around a scream, scooping under her knees with her hands and gritting her teeth. “Y’comin’ out, baby or not.”
“Course s’a goddamn baby, Beth.”
Beth jerks her head up mid-push, a cry dying on her tongue. Daryl stands at the bottom of the bed, not fully formed but more like a smoke smudge. Hot sweat runs into her eyes, clogging her lashes together, and the candle lights splinter around her, a haze descending over the room.
“Y’don’t know that,” she gasps.
A wave of agony rips her insides and she clenches her teeth to dilute the raw shriek escaping her throat. Her body shakes all over, her legs trembling in the air. Daryl seems to appear before he even disappears, now at her side of the bed and with one hand on her ankle.
“S’a baby,” he snaps in a voice she’s agonised to miss. “S’our goddamn baby, an’ y’better push ‘em out right now, Greene.”
Beth’s chin folds and she sobs into her chest, tucking her head down but not taking her eyes off him. Not daring to; drinking him up like the pain relief she so desperately craves.
“I can’t do it,” she gasps through heavy tears. “I can’t, Daryl.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“I can’t! Ughh!”” She moans, straining and shaking. “I can’t do this without yu!”
“M'right here, Beth.” His fingers squeeze her ankle. “Feel me.”
“Y’not!” She shouts in a wild yell that turns to tears. “Y’not, I’m all alone an’ I’m scared, an’ I can’t do this! I can’t, I can’t– oh fuckkkk.”
She throws her head back and screams at the top of her lungs, pushing and straining, the whole of her pelvis seeming to shed from her body. When she lifts her head back up, he’s gone again and she sobs, screwing her eyes closed to push once more.
The urge to push leaves at hour thirty-three and intermittently appears across hours thirty-four to five. It feels as if the baby is trying to come but then tucking back inside.
“Why won’t y’ come out?” She begs in a slur, now squatting. “Please come out. Please, baby. Please.”
Tears come thick and heavy, her lashes clumped together as she transitions back to her hands and knees.
“Mommy can’t take much more. I c-cu can’t,” she hiccups on a sob. “I really, really can’t.”
Hour thirty-six, the one where she feels as if she can’t bear one more second, where her skin is feverish and sweating, her muscles weak beyond belief, is the one where the ring of fire begins between her legs. With it, there’s a certainty and Beth gets on her back, spreads her legs; pushes, and knows this is the moment she meets her child.
The pain in her vagina is worse than any of the previous thirty-six hours of her labor. The stretch and shove of her baby's head turns her vision fuzzy. Panting and shrieking, she sits up, bracing her hands behind her, looks down, and shouts out in wonder.
“A head! I see a head!” She screams, laughing and crying all at once.
She reaches her hands out and hovers them over the crown of the baby's head as she continues to grit her teeth and push. Her cries and screams seem to naturally taper off until they stop. Her chest heaves in awe as first a shock of dark hair comes, and then a face appears; with it, Daryl’s mouth.
“Y’face up,” she chokes wetly, salt staining her lips. Tears splatter down her chest and splash her baby's appearing face. “Y’okay, y’ we’re jus’ face up!”
The pain seems to melt away and with it a sensation like water moving in her stomach, as her baby continues to appear between her legs. Her hands take the arms as they come out and help guide them, slick with blood and mucus, until the whole of her baby’s body is out of her own.
Stains of blood and other fluids paint her thighs and stomach as she lifts her baby with shaky arms.
“It’s a girl, she’s a girl.” She cries with gasping breaths. “Daryl, we have a little girl.”
Her daughter begins to cry immediately, and Beth barks a laugh intermingled with a sob, spittle spraying.
“Hello, my baby.”
Beth observes her daughter’s coloring for her health as she picks her up and cradles her to her chest. The shock of human skin touching hers again in so long sends goosebumps flooding across her body. She cries to feel it, setting about to tapping her daughter's back and checking her heart rate. Several minutes later, the soft urge to push comes again for the placenta.
Shakily, Beth deals with the umbilical cord, unable to stop a steady flow of tears. She takes a soft blanket and drapes it over her crying child, reclining back with a tender spine to lie them flat. Her daughter's cries are hearty and healthy but begin to soften as she lays on Beth’s chest and has her small back patted.
Beth stares at her daughter's face, amazed by all her small features. Her fingers stroke tenderly over her tiny nose and in the dying candles, she can see her own eyes looking back at her. The longer she looks, the stronger her heart thuds in her chest until it seems to explode, and a wave of love she’s never experienced before irrevocably changes her very being.
“Maggie,” she whispers. “M’so glad y’ home.”
Her daughter stops crying and stares at her in response, blinking big blue eyes that could be Beth's or even Beth's own Mama.
Beth grins. “Y’like your name, baby? S’for your aunt Maggie. She woulda loved to meet y’. But y’ daddy? Oh, y’ daddy woulda ‘dored you.”
She strokes her hand over the gunky clumps of her daughter's dark hair with a wobbly smile.
“He saved Mommy so many times, baby girl. He fought to protect me to his dyin’ day. An’ you, you’re the part of him he give me t’ hold; keep. You’re my gift, Maggie.”
Beth is too scared to sleep for the next two hours. Too scared to move off the bed. In the first hour, she nurses her daughter and then stares at her while she sleeps. Doesn’t even dare to breathe, just curled on her side stroking Maggie’s small cheek. But she has to take care of herself, to take care of her daughter.
So, she cleans up, even though every step makes her whimper. And even though she puts a crick in her neck turning to look at her newborn every two seconds. Beth put Maggie in the bassinet she found in her fourth month of pregnancy, but somehow it feels worse than leaving her in the middle of her birthing bed.
Then Beth washes and dresses, even though she cries the whole time and wishes with all her heart Daryl was here to help her. She strips and changes the bed, even though she has to take regular breaks to pant. She pulls the blankets from the dresser to make it more of a warm nest and she lights new candles, nibbles on mint, and drinks water.
When all of that’s done, she has to spend twenty minutes slouched against the bedroom wall to stop feeling so sick and dizzy. She hasn’t bled any more than she should have from birth, and she’s been studious in eating, drinking, and sleeping where she can. She thinks she’s done very well, considering Maggie’s face-up presentation.
She’s been extremely lucky but she’s so exhausted and emotional. She can’t remember the last point she wasn’t crying. Her eyes feel raw and her nose stuffed. Her whole body aches and the burning sensation between her legs after her first post-birth piss nearly makes her faint.
Beth takes a fortifying breath and then hobbles to prep the bed. She knows she should keep Maggie in the bassinet. But she feels so far away even next to Beth’s side of the bed. Beth therefore arranges the extra pillows in the dresser to form a barricade around the edges of the bed and lie some down on the floor.
She scoops Maggie up and brings her to bed on wobbly knees. Her daughter is swaddled in a blanket and doesn’t stir from the transition. Beth marvels at how tiny and fragile she feels as she carries her. There’s a new scent of her baby that she can’t stop inhaling. They lie in the middle, Maggie protected by her blanket and her pillows.
Beth pulls the blankets on the bed only to her waist despite the cooling temperature, terrified she’ll smother her daughter.
Then she lets her sore eyes drift closed for sleep.
When Beth wakes, the room is flooded with dying orange light and hazy as if she can’t quite clear the sleep from her eyes. Daryl is lying across from her, caging their daughter between their bodies.
Her bottom lip quivers in the instant she lays eyes on him. “I did it.”
“Y’did,” he rumbles, his fingers stroking Maggie’s hair. “Told ya she was a baby.”
She laughs under her breath, spreading her hand out on Maggie’s little belly.
“M’so proud of you,” he whispers, and his eyes mist. “So fuckin’ proud.”
A sob shakes her and she stretches her hand out. He takes it in his, entwining their fingers together.
“I miss y’so much,” she gasps, escalating towards hyperventilation.
“Miss you too, girl,” he croaks.
Then he glances down at Maggie and smiles. “My girls.”
Beth stares at them both through tears. “Thank y'for my gift. For our baby. I- I’ll always love you, Daryl.”
He looks up at her with a grin that hurts her heart. “Always love ya too, Greene.”
The edges of her vision begin to pull in tighter and dread grips her heart.
“M’bout to wake up,” she says with desperate panic. “M’bout to be a mommy.”
He stares at her, still grinning and answers, “Yeah, an’ you know what?”
She wipes at her blurry eyes hurriedly, trying to keep him in her vision where he begins to dissipate like smoke. “What?”
“Y’gonna be so damn good at it.”
Agneska Mon 09 Dec 2024 07:48PM UTC
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